Welcome to the Sex ad the City Re-watch: Season 1 Episode 1-4 This was a very different show starting out than it ended up...

I kept trying to write some witty observations about this show, but I couldn’t find enough things to talk about on a whole. So, here are just some random observations about the first 4 episodes

- This show started out as a long commentary/observation of being a single woman in your 30s at a very specific time in New York city. I forgot that Carrie used to break the fourth wall, along some of the people she would interview. It’s very much a column made into a show, which makes sense because it started as a column/book by Candace Bushnell

- However, I am struck by how *NOT* funny or amusing the show is at this point. In the first few episodes it’s all tired and stereotypical observations about sex and single life. Married women are threatened by single women- har har har har. Its hard for women to find single men their age - hur hur hur. I do remember laughing at this show. Hopefully it starts to be funny...

- How does Samantha keep any of her friends? First episode, she hits on Mr Big (even though she knows Carrie is into him - granted she does ask Carrie if it’s okay) but then she ends up sleeping with the guy Charlotte went on a date with...wtf? And this is clearly just usual behaviour from her it seems by the attitude of her friends. In a later episodes, she phones Carrie, waking her up to tell her about the amazing sex she had and in what different position. Who does that? I would be so pissed if someone woke me up to just brag about the sex they just had, beyond the fact that it’s TMI and I WAS FUCKING SLEEPING.

- I’ve felt getting older meant that you kinda shed the friends that you had nothing in common with, and so that these 4 women who had zilch in common were still hanging out and being besties kinda boggles the mind a bit. HOWEVER, they do all seem to be vapid, shallow and materialistic wanting to be at the hot new clubs and restaurant openings...so I guess that’s what keeps them together? That’s an awesome basis for friendships.

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- I had forgotten about Skipper! Today he would be a lovable nerd, back then he was just a nerd and awkward. Skipper was before his time.

- Charlotte is the worst. She dumps a guy because of his taste in China pattern...girl, you deserve to be single for so fucking long because your standards are stupid.

- Stop dating investment bankers - they are all assholes. It’s clear that this show was aspirational in that they dated rich connected men, but man, of course they weren’t going to find anyone in those circles - those dudes are douchebros as a rule.

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- Samantha refers to Mr Big as “the next Donald Trump” in the pilot ...BIG FOR PRESIDENT!

- The pilot’s air was much grittier and darker looking than what followed. I felt like an episode of the Red Shoe Diaries (remember that soft core show with David Duchovny? My confused teenaged repressed sexual hormones loved that show). Sarah Jessica Parker’s makeup and general look is also messier - her makeup is less polished her hair is shorter. The other women look similar to how they did later on in the show. I wonder if this was a conscious choice or just that they had more money to spend on lighting and makeup.

- It’s clear that this show tried to stay on the air simply with shock value with the way the 4 women discuss their sex lives. I just finished watching the episode where Charlotte’s boyfriend wants to have anal sex. I get that it was less common 20 years ago, but to have to talk to all your girlfriends about it? And everyone is so shocked? And only the uber sexual deviant Samantha has done it? I call foul. I remember being in high school and having a girls discussion one night over a lot of drinks and a couple of the young women had tried anal sex with their long term boyfriends - I find it hard to believe that this was such a shocking request for someone in their 30s.

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- This show feels like it’s women who are in their 30s acting like they are 25 year olds dating. See the anal sex bit above. If they are supposedly having “so much sex” (i.e. sex regularly with whomever they are dating at the time), all of these OMG this random thing happened on a date/during sex just seems ridiculous. It’s not so much that they talk about it, but HOW they talk about it, like they lived super sheltered surburban lives until now, not the open/progressive lives of women in NYC in the 90s.

- Big is so fucking slimy.

- I can see clearly now why people accused this show of being white women substituted for a certain kind of gay man. Samantha especially. But also a certain kind of gay man saying shit to SHOCK his closeted gay friend who grew up sheltered in the country.